Subject Found
by Lady Russell Holmes
Summary: After 8 years, Ed finds Spike. He's been kept away from the world all this time, but by who?
1. Subject found

"Subject found."

"Huumphh." The figure in the bed rolled over, a long, tanned arm snaking out of the blankets to turn off the sounding alarm on the computer beside the bed.

"Subject found."

"Huumphh?"

"Subject found."

"Found? Found!" Sitting up, Ed clawed the blankets away and flipped across the room to land in front of her computer.

"Subject found." The computer's little face-icon was laughing and repeating itself, blinking as though it were proud of itself. The search that was in question had been ongoing for nearly four years, a constant task for both computer and hacker. Ed's goggles glowed in the dim light of her apartment as she chased down in the net what her program had found. Following the path it had laid, she was led to a convenience store's security cameras, to a single, grainy image of a man. A face that shouldn't be there, shouldn't be alive, with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was looking straight into the camera, smiling at a stray thought. Ed wound through the camera's records, watched the man walk backwards out of the store, then switched it forwards to see him enter, lighting the cigarette. He bought a magazine and a package of doughnuts, flirted with the night-clerk, and smiled at the security camera above the door as he left. The date and time were on the screen, along with the location. Spike Spiegel had been at Jake's Grab in Ganymede less than two hours ago. But Spike had been dead for eight years.

{So, what do you think? I know this is a topic done to death, but believe me. I have a few twists to give you all. So please, read, relish, and review. Oh, and since I have to have a disclaimer, here's Spike himself to do it for me.

Spike: Listen, you. This fic belongs to me! If you don't like that, have a lobster!

Okay, Spike, that was very.... nice. Now, back in the Bishi Bin!

Spike: Aww...}


	2. No one at all

Jet was setting out dinner for himself and his family when the comm lit up. "Spike, would you get that?" he shouted, trying to be heard above the 'friendly' argument over a video game in the front room. Spike, his six year-old son, withdrew with a parting shot that made the other two howl indignantly and walked to the vid-phone, pressing the button to accept a call. Jet smiled as he heard the boy answer. 

"Black's place. What do you want?"

The response, however, made him jump.

"Is Jet-person there?" Ed's voice rang loud and clear through his mind. He hadn't heard from her since she walked away from them all on Earth all those years ago, but he would never have forgotten her. Who could? He sprang for the comm, grabbing it out of his son's hand before he could answer the girl.

"Ed? That you?" 

"Who else would it be, silly?" she asked, grinning and standing on her head. She hardly looked older at all, despite eight intervening years. Her hair was longer, he noticed. Harder to mistake her for a boy now.

"How've you been?" he asked, leaning against the comm unit, grinning. He would never have admitted it eight years ago, but the young woman before him had once been as dear to him as his sons were now. "Haven't heard from you in a long time."

"I know," she said, an uncharacteristically solemn look taking over her face. "I've been... busy." She looked aside from the screen. "I called because I found something, and I want your help."

"What is it?" he asked, concerned.

"See for yourself," she said, still not smiling. She typed in a few commands off-screen before disappearing from view. Replacing her was an image that made Jet's heart stop. Spike, grinning grainily into a security camera. "This was taken yesterday," Ed's voice said from the background. "On Ganymede."

"It can't be..." Jet muttered. "It can't be. Spike?"

"Yes?" The boy looked back at his father.

"No, not you," Jet said, waving him off. "Go play." He lowered his voice, speaking to the screen. "Is it him?"

Ed's image came back on screen, nodding sagely. "As far as the net knows. I set up a face-know system, and it's been running for four years. Most of it, I use to find bounty-heads, but to test it, I set it to search for Spike-person, and then, I just never turned it off. "I knew he was dead, that it would never find him, but..." Righting herself, she shrugged eloquently. "Ed was wrong."

Jet shook his head, trying to make sense of this. "I saw him dead," he said to her. "I was the one to claim his body from the morgue, you know. Vicious had carved him up with that damned sword of his, and he'd been shot at least twice. There's no way he came back to life. I.. I buried him at space, over Mars. It's what I thought he would have wanted." He raised his voice, trying not to let the prickles in his eyes turn to tears. "He's dead, Ed. I don't know who that is, but it's not Spike!"

Suddenly, a beeping startled Ed. "Subject found," said her computer. She just stared at it for a second, then turned back to the screen.

"Well, it's not-Spike again." She brought up an image of the green-haired man standing at a credit booth. "Oh, what luck!" she explained. "Now I can find out who he is, or who he says he is, anyway." She flipped back onto her head as her toes typed commands into the computer. "Searching, searching, finding, found!"

"Well, who is he?" Jet asked, anxious despite himself. Ed hummed to herself as she tapped keys with her toes, and a digital fish brought up one screen of data, than another. 

"Hmmm," she said. "Card holder is one Mr. Nameless. This card does not exist, but he buys souvenirs with it. Curious." Her tapping sped up, and her face, though still upside down, grew serious. "It's from high-up, this secret name. Someone doesn't want people to know who Spike-not-Spike is. Oh?!"

On the screen with the Spike look-alike, things were happening. A car drove up slowly in the background, long and black. The green-haired man, seeing its reflection in the glass of the booth, stiffened, and his hand went to a bulge under his arm, drawing a black pistol. When the first shot issued from the car, he leapt out of the camera's field of view, firing a shot back. After that, all that Jet and Ed could see was the car and the men that fired from behind its broken windows, shouting silently to each other. Suddenly, a stray bullet hit the camera, and the scene dissolved into grey static.

"What? Get it back!" Jet yelled, grabbing the screen.

"Sorry," replied Ed in a sing-song voice. "No can do, Jet-person. Camera gone."

"Arggh!" he said, punching the wall next to him.

"What, Jet-person? Worried? I thought you said this wasn't Spike." Ed's voice was sly, as she turned a slow cartwheel to land on her feet, her eyes never leaving the screen.

"It can't be," he growled. "But... who else can it be?"

"No one at all," she said cryptically. "A ghost."

"No such thing as ghosts." Jet pulled a chair over, sat down in it. He needed a drink.

"Then it's Spike." Ed chirped, rocking back on her heels. "I'm on Earth, in Nova-Seattle. Come and get me, and I'll show you where we can find him. Oh," she added, winking. "And bring Faye-person if you want." With a blip, the screen went dark.

{Unfortunately, Cowboy Bebop still belongs to someone who isn't me. On the other hand, my birthday is on Monday! Who knows what'll happen. 

Spike: You already told me. You're getting a car.

Oh, I am, aren't I? *huge grin* And a bright red convertible at that. Perfect for Bishi-hunting!}


	3. No life

"Who does she think she is?" muttered Jet as he rose from the chair, tousling his son's hair as he walked out of the room, back into the living area of the ship. The Bebop was well used as a family ship, and Jet was happy on her. With three sons, things still weren't crowded. Only the oldest was his, technically. The other two had adopted him, much the same way that Ed had, so many years before. "Old softy," Faye called him, and he didn't argue, except about the "old" part. 

Faye was away right now, chasing down a lesser bounty on her own. She still did that from time to time, when motherhood pressed her independence too hard. Her comm would be off, Jet knew, so he didn't try. She was a temperamental wife.

__________________________________________________________

Subject Eight was recaptured only two days after he had escaped. It had taken nine men to bring him down, and only three returned unharmed, carrying an unconcious Subject Eight. Two did not return at all. The man had been most reluctant to return to the base. Jordan watched dispassionately as they put the subject back in his cell, their anger showing in unnecessarily harsh treatment as they fastened his restraints. Only when he was chained, hand, foot, and neck to the wall, did Jordan approach. 

"Eight," he called, the only name the man before him had had for eight years. "Eight, wake up." The man opened his eyes groggily, blinking a few times in the bright light. Blood was crusted around one eye, which was ringer further in purple bruise. His eyes widened briefly as he realized his captivity, but then they narrowed, focusing on the man standing between him and the light.

"Jordan," he acknowledged in a low, angry voice. He glared at him, subtly tugging against his bonds.

"Why did you run?"

No answer.

"You know we can't let you loose. You had your freedom, two years of it. We shouldn't have let that happen, but we did. We were merciful. And remember, you would be dead, were it not for us."

"I would rather be dead," Subject Eight growled, looking aside from his captor's eyes. "This is not a life."

"Oh," rejoined Jordan, turning to leave. "But it is. Not one you might like, but this..." His gesture took in the cell and the bare, metal-walled hall beyond it. "Is all the life you get." For once, his face registered an emotion; anger. "It's more life than you deserve." The door clanged shut behind him, and the cell and its lone occupant were plunged into darkness.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Faye arrived back at the Bebop in a flurry of shopping bags and new clothes. Apparently, her lone hunt had gone well. Almost before her ship hit Bebop's decks, she was leaping clear of its cockpit, running straight past her family and into the main cabin, where she punched the vid screen, collapsing onto the couch just as the familiar music for Big Shpt filled the room.

"Well, that's friendly," commented Jet, following her into the room. "No greetings for your loving family?"

"Shhh!" she hissed, waving at him. "They're announcing a big bounty today. I heard about it from one of my contacts on Earth."

Onscreen, Judy was grinning at the camera. She had, a few years ago, resurrected the famous bounty hunter's show, and hosted it herself now. "Howdy," she said, waving. "Welcome to yet another episode of Big Shot, the bounty hunter's prime source. Let's see, what do I have for you all today. Ah, now here's something to make you all excited. As I'm sure you all know, last week, Ganymede's Prime Minister was assassinated. Well, the government has a picture of the guy who did it, and they want him bad. So bad, in fact, that they've posted a 300,000, 000 woolong bounty for his head, dead or alive. Here's the picture."

As the image, blurred and grainy, came up in the screen, Jet choked and Faye let out a shocked gasp. Spike, grinning madly at the camera, saluting with a bloody hand, a gun cocked loosely over his shoulder.

"It's not possible," Faye stuttered, looking to Jet with confused eyes. "Spike's dead, long dead."

"That's what I said," Jet muttered, "But I guess I was wrong. Ed contacted me yesterday," he explained. "Her computers found him two days ago, on Ganymede. I thought it was a look-alike. A doppelganger, but that," he gestured to the screen where the image lingered. "That's Spike."

{Still not mine, maddit, but my birthday's in three days, so we'll see. I'M GETTING A 1994 CANDY-APPLE RED CHRYSLER LeBARON CONVERTIBLE!!! As you can tell, I'm a little excited about it. So, if you would be so kind, please review my story. That would be a great birthday present for me, too.

Spike: Not as good a present as that car. Can we name it Swordfish 3?

Depends how fast it can go.

Spike: Fair enough.}


End file.
